Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/153

 SECT. III.] SOUTHERN INDTANS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 117 villages called Nitehata and Towahach, where they cultivate corn. The Tawakenoes, who live two hundred miles west of Nacogdoches, south of Red River, are said by Dr. Sibley to speak the same language. This, from the similarity of name, has been presumed to be a dialect of the Pawnees, of the Arkansa. At the time of Major Long's first expedition, they had been driven from their villages by the Osages ; but they have probably returned, and are the same nation with those Indians who have now villages on the north of Red River and are designated by the name of Towecas and Wachos, in a treaty lately concluded with several western tribes. Be- yond the Panis, there are none but erratic tribes who do not cultivate any thing. To this enumeration we must add, though not mentioned by Dr. Sibley, 8. The Chitimachas, formerly living in the vicinity of Lake Barataria, and still existing in Lower Louisiana. Among the various small tribes, the following have Choctaw names, to wit, the Pascagoulas, " Bread nation," from Pasha, " bread," and ogoulas, corrupted from okla, " nation, people " ; the Aqueloupissas, " who hear and see," from hoklo, " to hear, " and pissa, " to see " ; Oumas, " Red people," from humma, (i red" ; Oqueloussas, from oka, " water," and lusa, " black " ; to which we might add one of the small Yazoo tribes, mentioned by Du Pratz by the name of Oufe Ogoulas, or " Dog nation," from oufe, " dog." This however alone is not sufficient to prove that those small tribes were Choctaws or spoke dialects of that language, unless the names by which they are known to us were those by which they called themselves. The first settlement of the French was on Mobile River, and the first tribe near the mouth of that river with which they came in contact, was called Mobilian and spoke Choctaw. Hence they designated that language by the name of Mobilian, and on account of its great extent it was called the common or vulgar tongue.* In the same manner as, in the north, we call to this day two Sioux tribes, who speak languages altogether different from the Algon- kin, by the Algonkin names of Winnebagoes and Assiniboins, which they do not recognise as their own. The French were in the habit of designating nations and objects not belonging to
 * Du Pratz.